I’m here writing again. I nearly went and did some admin rather than sitting down to write first off. In fact I nearly went and opened my emails.
Persistence. Will. Habits
It takes a lot of determination to make new habits and learn new things. To forge a new path. Commitment to doing it, even if you fall off. Since I started my latest writing push some months ago now, I’ve missed many days as well as had some really good runs.
But I’ve kept myself focussed on what I want to achieve rather than on what I’ve not done. It’s a such a different way of doing things than what I used to do.
I’m not expecting myself to be perfect, instead I’m expecting myself to be relentless with my persistence.
What my Daughter taught me
It’s something my daughter Quilah has taught me.
She’s really not too worried about failing. She just keeps persisting with it.
For weeks sometimes, even months. It took her about 3 months to work out how to a get sock on, and about a year to get it pretty much 100%. She’d get really frustrated at times, but she never held onto the ‘failure’.
She just kept persisting with it.
The next opportunity to put her socks on was simply the next time to try. And as soon as she got frustrated she’d ask for help.
That was humbling.
Wiser than me in this and I’m 42 years older.
There's knowing and doing with depth & humbleness
I’ve been fairly good at creating habits and learning skills in my life, but she’s really taught me something, not so much conceptually as I’ve known how important persistence is for a long time.
But it’s in the openness and egolessness it takes to really persist with something that feels hard which is really blowing me away.
She just decides there’s something she wants to do and keeps working on it, trying to work it out and asking for help when she reaches even a small dead end.
It's the asking for help bit that I see myself, and so many other adults, loose along the way.
This natural willingness just to keep going and being humble enough to ask for help is one of the most valuable things she’s taught me.
She’s really taught me how to learn again.
And it’s this persistence and willingness to ask for help that’s the key to learning.
I may need to teach her this gift back some day - or she’ll re-learn it from her children like me.